


It's (Always) You

by kaibasetos



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaibasetos/pseuds/kaibasetos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows nothing else would taste as bittersweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's (Always) You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I can't stop writing about them, but not sorry enough to actually stop.

They haven’t even kissed yet.

Kaiba finds it impossible not to think about on nights like these, lying in a dark room occupied only by the depthless shadows of moonlight and the deceptively soft rise and fall of Jounouchi’s breathing. They haven’t kissed. It took persuasion and promise for Kaiba to allow Jounouchi into his bed in the first place, just to sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. The weight beside him feels so foreign yet so familiar, balancing right on the line between comforting and unsettling. Jounouchi is only inches away but those inches feel like turbulent seas Kaiba cannot swim through.

They haven’t kissed. Kaiba can’t even allow himself to talk about it, to put a form to his want, and Jounouchi is so painfully patient with him it makes him want to cry out in the dark. Instead he stares at the long, thin slants of blue light the blinds on the window cast across his bedroom and wishes they were sharp enough to prick his skin and open him bloody.

Jounouchi inhales and it sounds like the wind blowing through tree branches moments before a storm. He exhales and it sounds like the sigh of ocean waves washing up on the shore. Kaiba counts the breaths in his head and aches for him.

On the thirty-second breath, he rolls over onto his side, face to face with Jounouchi. The moon is bright enough tonight to illuminate him dimly, and Kaiba drinks in the picture it paints: the way the blankets are ruffled messily over his shoulder, the way his fingers are curled loosely around the edge of the sheet, the way his hair has drifted into his face, the way his mouth hangs open just a little. The chapped pink of his lips. The peaceful shape of his eyes. The glow that surrounds him like a halo. He looks holy, divine, and Kaiba feels the weight of dust and crime settling onto his shoulders.

It would be so easy, like this. So easy to kiss him. He wouldn’t even have to know. He would wake with no idea of the deep imprints of selfish love and selfish longing Kaiba left on his body.

He would wake and remain free.

Kaiba feels himself drawn irresistibly to temptation, shifting closer before he’s even aware of his own movements. He leans up and pauses with his lips hovering over Jounouchi’s, his heart an endless roll of thunder, caught in a pocket of time that seems to exist only for them. After the space of three more breaths, Jounouchi stirs. Kaiba freezes in place.

“Mmm, Kaiba?” Jounouchi mutters in a voice that’s barely a voice at all, stretching out luxuriously under the blankets. As soon as his eyes are open they narrow in concern, a question, half-awake confusion. “Aren’t ya supposed to be sleepin’?”

Kaiba can feel Jounouchi’s steady exhales instead of just hearing them now, the softest of flutters. They’re breathing the same breath and sharing the same space and he chokes. “I can't stop thinking,” he says through a mouthful of feeling. He’s not sure if Jounouchi notices or cares how close he is until Jounouchi’s hand uncurls from the sheet and rests on his shoulder instead, his thumb on Kaiba’s throat. Kaiba’s body feels drawn taut as a bow string, like fabric about to tear. Jounouchi ruins him so easily.

“About?” Jounouchi prompts, his tone tousled and tugged down around the edges like he’s fighting off the memory of sleep.

The wail of sirens breaks the tranquil silence of the night as police cars speed down the street outside, past the mansion and further. Red and blue flicker through the window in a rhythm and Kaiba wonders if the victim they’re speeding to is in any amount of turmoil that can even compare to his own right now. Jounouchi’s thumb runs over his skin and he feels the mad rush of those sirens reach every corner of him. He needs 911 on speed dial.

“You,” Kaiba answers, every letter dragging heavy through his lungs.  _You, you, you. It’s always you._

Jounouchi gives him a drowsy little smile, his eyes crinkling up, and his hand curls around the back of Kaiba’s neck to hold him still as he closes the gap between them and presses a small kiss to the corner of Kaiba’s mouth. It’s nothing, it’s so crooked and mindless and not quite there and it’s gone before Kaiba can even wrap his mind around it, but he’s never felt anything so immensely in his life. He feels like buildings shaken down to their foundations by full-force hurricanes. He feels like splintering wood and smashed glass. He can’t breathe.

“I’m right here,” Jounouchi assures him tiredly, twisting Kaiba’s hair up in his fingers and kissing the other side of his mouth. It’s still not exactly right but it’s so close that everything inside Kaiba is gasoline and explosion and he doesn’t know if he could handle anything more than this, if he’ll ever be able to. He dreads the thought and comes alive with it all the same. “I’ll always be right here. Get some rest, okay?”

Jounouchi waits until Kaiba nods, just once, sharply, and with another little smile he lets it go. His eyes close and Kaiba needs to plead, for solace, for more, but he can’t even find a way to whisper. He stares at Jounouchi a moment longer and then settles with tremendous effort back down into his pillow, his throat too dry to swallow, all of him dry, like dead brush in the path of a forest fire. Doomed.

Jounouchi falls asleep again long before he does. The echo of the word _always_ seems to hang in the air and stretch on infinite into the night, touching stars and brushing along planets, but it makes its home in the center of Kaiba’s chest and he keeps it there like something sacred. He builds a nest for it out of the charred remnants of his sin, out of shrapnel pulled straight from Hell, and just for a minute he feels as holy as Jounouchi is.

When he does finally manage to drift off, he dreams fitfully of beautiful gold light and the music of Heaven and his hands clasped tight in prayer. He dreams of blond hair and brown eyes and another’s lips hard against his own.

He awakens with the first syllable of Jounouchi’s name sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and he knows nothing else would taste as bittersweet.


End file.
